Bonus Battle Bounty
by ladycordelia17
Summary: Want to see Peach kick some butt in battle? You've got it! Here she has a go at a Smasher she doesn't particularly like, but otherwise respects for everybody else's sake. Oneshot, rated for safety.


**_Here is a colorful description of a bonus battle between two Smashers who are polar opposites that would seem forever at cross purposes. If you're feeling daring, grab a copy of the lists of bonus points and values and try calculating the combatants' bonuses for yourself!_**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Super Smash Bros. Melee or any characters or locations within, or the bonus-battle point system._

**Bonus Battle Bounty**

"Smashers report to the teleporter room!" boomed the voice of Master Hand over an intercom system, a command that brought all of the Smashers away from whatever they were doing and into a room furnished with many teleporters and what looked like several roulette wheels.

"Good luck, Mario," Peach told her beloved, who gave her a smile and a wink in passing. At this sign, however, Peach was nervous—somehow she had been in enough of a good mood to forget to be on edge about her match, but now she felt some scattered butterflies in her stomach. Not without reason, either—she'd be facing Captain Falcon, who as an opponent was both fast and powerful. But since the Smashers were fighting for bonus points, if Peach could play catch-me-if-you-can and avoid as many of Falcon's attacks as possible, she could beat him.

The first combatants to battle, however, were Zelda, Princess of Hyrule, and Ness, the psychic boy who had smart-mouthed Bowser at the breakfast table. Theirs was a three-minute bonus match set on the Fourside City stage, and Ness had beaten Princess Zelda by nearly six thousand points.

"Our next contenders will be Princess Peach and Captain Falcon!" Master Hand announced. "Crazy, spin the stage wheel for our combatants!"

Crazy Hand obeyed, spinning the stage-selection roulette wheel so hard that it almost flew off its axle. But finally the wheel stopped—on the Fountain of Dreams stage. Peach let out a small sigh of relief; she had been particularly dreading the topsy-turvy Brinstar Depths stage.

She stepped into one of the teleporters, watched as Captain Falcon stepped into another teleporter, and they both found themselves on the Fountain of Dreams.

A voice (presumably Master Hand's) shouted, "Ready? GO!"

Peach made the first move, body-slamming Falcon with an explosion that knocked him down to a lower platform. Not to be beaten so easily, Falcon jumped back up and threw several punches at Peach—who shoved him off the high platform again and seized the moment to pluck a vegetable out of the ground and throw it, hitting Falcon in the head.

When Peach jumped down to the bottom of the stage, Falcon followed with the intention of throwing her into the air with a Raptor Boost, only to be engulfed in flames when Peach deflected the attack with a bubble shield. Plucking up another vegetable, Peach threw it as before—this time only to have Falcon catch it and throw it back at her. But no way was Peach going to let any opponent use her own devices against her—she caught the vegetable and threw it back at Falcon.

For about four or five seconds the two combatants looked ridiculous, throwing the vegetable back and forth at each other only to have the other catch it and throw it back—until Peach abandoned the vegetable-throwing sport with one last throw and ran to a place several feet behind her where some items were scattered. Falcon discarded the vegetable and promptly tried to dash forward and grab Peach but missed—somehow she had managed to slip through his fingers.

Falcon realized only too late where Peach had escaped to—she had seized hold of a Warp Star and taken to the air, slamming him so far off the side when she landed that he hadn't even a chance to get back to the stage.

"Suh-WEET!" Peach called joyfully as she twirled around and winked at Master Hand operating a giant camera off in the distance. And she deserved to taunt—she was ahead of Falcon by at least three thousand points. But now that Falcon had arrived onstage again via recovery platform, Peach had to act fast if she was to keep her lead, so she grabbed a Poké Ball and threw it in the hopes that it contained a Pokémon with an attack that would build Falcon's damage level up again.

No luck. The Poké Ball contained a tiny, weak Goldeen, which turned out worthless. Falcon seized this opportunity to grab Peach and punch her several times—the beating he intended for her when she had ended the vegetable-throwing standoff. Upon breaking Falcon's hold Peach slapped him twice, giving herself just enough time to deliver a powerful tennis-racket strike. When the blow hit home, Peach stepped back to get her hands on a Hammer just behind her—but this hammer was broken; the head fell off at the first swing.

"FALCON PUNCH!" came a shout just before Peach found herself thrown off the edge of the stage and into oblivion—when she was unable to let go of the broken hammer, Falcon had taken advantage of her vulnerability and delivered his favorite attack of all time. As such, it was now Falcon's turn to taunt: "Show me your moves!"

When Peach returned and jumped off her recovery platform, upon reaching the ground she spun around in a whirlwind that knocked Falcon back a yard or two—giving her enough time to grab a Cloaking Device and become invisible. The result was highly amusing: Peach enjoyed the sport of watching Falcon blindly throw punches and kicks as he jumped from place to place, missing every time, until the Cloaking Device's power ran out and she had to employ a different tactic. Fortunately a Motion-Sensor Bomb was at hand, and Peach threw that to plant it on a rising platform, and then she ran to where lay a Beam Sword, taunting just as she did just after knocking Falcon off the stage before picking the weapon up.

Refusing to take the bait, Falcon waited until Peach returned to the highest platform before jumping high enough to grab her and then release her with a violent explosion—but he had mistimed the grab; he wound up throwing Peach in the opposite direction of the Motion-Sensor Bomb, and she quickly recovered. So she struck Falcon with the Beam Sword once with a weak cutting stroke before delivering a powerful slice that threw him just over the platform on which the Motion-Sensor Bomb lay ready. Falcon vaulted himself back over the platform-edge that he grabbed when he should have simply dropped down to the main stage—the result being that he came close enough to the bomb to detonate it and flew away into the oblivion behind the stage. Seeing the reflection of a twinkling star on the great lens of Master Hand's camera, Peach taunted.

Even as she was clearly ahead, Peach knew that she had to strategize carefully to stay ahead, so she picked up an item crate and threw it. The attack didn't do Falcon any damage as he had just jumped off his recovery platform, but the crate broke open, revealing that it contained a Home-Run Bat, a Fire Flower, a Bob-omb, and a Parasol. Despite a spinning flip-kick from Falcon, Peach snatched the Bob-omb just before it could ignite its own fuse and threw it. This throw missed Falcon completely, but Peach did manage to get the Fire Flower and flame her opponent in-between kicks, a few shoves, and a whirlwind.

As Falcon's damage level was now at 116 while Peach's was still only 45, Peach would lose many points if she fell either at Falcon's hands or at her own—she had to knock him off the stage again before he could regain his bearings. So she made a grab for the Home-Run Bat—but Falcon thwarted her effort with a powerful Raptor Boost and then grabbed her again, punching her several times. Peach reciprocated by throwing Falcon up toward a platform where wandered another Bob-omb—this one promptly exploded, throwing the hapless bounty hunter into the oblivion behind the stage again. Now Peach was positively glowing with the thrill of victory, and she even heard a crowd of voices cheering her on as she taunted twice in a row.

Falcon was in a fury by now—upon descending from the recovery platform for a third time he seized hold of Peach and pummeled her yet again, throwing at least five more punches at her before she repaid him with a throw-down, shove, and golf-club strike. As her damage level was high now, Peach sprinted to where a Heart Container had just fallen, snatching it up and recovering to a significant degree. The battle was not over yet, and the princess intended to keep her lead. But Peach's efforts to avoid another fall were thwarted when she shrank to a tiny size upon contact with a Poison Mushroom. She tried to play hard-to-catch by floating around as she did whenever trying to recover from a blow, but Falcon managed to nail her with a flaming dive-kick—throwing her high into the air and right toward Master Hand's camera. As Peach had sustained a damage level of 64 up to her fall including the blow that caused it, she realized that the coincidence would earn Falcon another 640 points.

Luckily Peach had two means of earning more points at her descent from her recovery platform: a Metal Box and a Super Scope. She grabbed both and proceeded to shoot at Falcon, prepared to body-slam him if he came too close to her again—which she was forced to do when the Super Scope ran out of shots and had failed to deliver a finishing blow. But Peach was still sure that she had earned points for knocking Falcon off the stage whilst the Metal Box still had its effect.

As soon as Falcon's just-recovered invulnerability wore off, Peach grabbed him by the collar and threw him toward a barrel. The broken-barrel explosion did a minor amount of damage that Falcon was able to recover with three food items that appeared when the barrel broke—a bunch of grapes, a sandwich, and a head of lettuce, to be exact.

Peach wasn't so lucky, though, after Falcon pummeled her for a fourth time and punched her several feet away from the stage. She was able to float safely back onstage—but again a Poison Mushroom shrunk her as she set foot onstage. With no other means of doing significant damage while tiny without the use of items, Peach body-slammed Falcon twice before he regained his bearings enough to do another grab-and-throw explosion attack—this one sending Peach flying away off the side of the stage even as she regained her normal size. Seeing Peach open her parasol for further floating distance, Falcon dropped down from the edge of which the princess intended to take hold and hung there, vaulting himself back up only after he saw Peach return to the stage via recovery platform.

With an insane stroke of luck, Peach managed to grab a Freezie and throw it at Falcon, freezing him in place just close enough to the edge that a hard shove spelled an inevitable fall—barely four seconds after Peach herself had fallen down; a more-than-justified reason to taunt.

"I suppose you think you're very clever," Falcon sneered right after he taunted upon recovery-platform descent—there were only five seconds left in the match, and he could still win points for finishing with no damage.

But Peach barely heard this jeering remark as she had gone to retrieve a Lip's Stick—and struck Falcon with it before he could taunt again just as Master Hand called, "TIME!"

"Wait until you see your points," remarked Mario in passing as the combatants returned to the teleporter room. Peach already had the good feeling of believing that she had won, but she had to see her score to know for sure.

The score table read as follows:

**Combatant 1: Peach TOTAL POINTS 73300**

**Combatant 2: C. Falcon TOTAL POINTS 44540**

"Oooh, Falcon got beat by a princess—what, you aren't going to pummel her like you did after she threw you at that Bob-omb?" Peach overheard Ganondorf taunt, apparently trying to provoke Captain Falcon into lashing out at her post-match.

"Can it, King of Creeps," called out Link, known in Hyrule as the Hero of Time, who frequently was faced with the task of thwarting Ganondorf.

Bowser, too, was in a fury at having seen the match play out as it did—he felt threatened about the possibility that he himself would suffer a defeat at Peach's hands in the future. "SEE? That's why no one should be allowed to fight for bonus points!" he stormed, smoke rising from the corners of his mouth.

Mario hugged Peach tightly, eager to share her joy. "I knew you'd win this one—but I was surprised at how many points you beat him by. You really know how to fight for bonuses!" he congratulated.

Peach giggled. "I've been getting better, I know. But even so, beating Falcon at _anything_ is no mean feat--I think Link only ever did it once, maybe Fox won twice, and poor little Ness barely managed to get all the coins he needed in that coin match some time ago."

"Just isn't my day today, princess," said Falcon offhandedly. "It hasn't been my day bonus-match-wise since that unfortunate incident when Master Hand postponed the matches for interrogations."


End file.
